My mother took Leta for eight hours yesterday WITHOUT BEING ASKED TO DO SO because she no longer cares whether or not I live or die. This doesn’t bother me at all. I mean, FREE BABYSITTING. And, finally, I have leverage in our relationship. Jon and I decided that since we weren’t going to kill ourselves by cutting Memorial Day into pieces to spend with his side of the family and my side of the family that we wouldn’t split it at all and just sit inside and eat Doritos. In loving memory of My Belly.

My mother called early yesterday morning to ascertain our plans and when I told her that we’d be staying home she said, “Well, I didn’t want to see you, I wanted to see Leta.”

“You think I don’t know this already?” I asked her.

“Is it that obvious?” She was genuinely curious.

“Of course it’s that obvious, and don’t think that when you die and will all your jewelry to her that I won’t hock it and buy drugs. ILLEGAL drugs, Mom.”

Jon spent the rest of the day doing what he rarely does, SITTING STILL, and I tried to get as organized as possible for a few upcoming trips. At about 4:30 PM we decided that we had waited until it was appropriately late enough in the day for whiskey and then we set out for Drunken Dog Running and Picking Up Poop At The Park Again.

I don’t think either of us had brushed our teeth (it was a holiday! and the baby was gone! the fact that we GOT OUT OF BED shows you just how dedicated we are to living a full life) and I was still wearing a large portion of my pajamas. Chuck didn’t notice, however, because one of us said the words, “You’re coming with us,” and his brain immediately oozed into his urinary tract where it would mark things for the next thirty minutes.

When we got to he park we noticed that Chuck was having problems passing something, anything, could have been anything, I NO LONGER KNOW WITH THAT ANIMAL. He would turn madly in circles and then sit abruptly looking at us like, “What are you looking at? There is nothing going on here.” I’m glad he was in denial because I was in no mood to go fishing for missing household objects.

After playing the shaker game again with a bottle of expired vegetable laxatives and anti-psychotics we motioned for him to follow us home. Instead, he ran off to the side of the park for one last attempt to spin something out of his butt, and this time he was successful. Jon, ever the chivalrous poop-picker-upper, walked over, covered his hand in a plastic poop bag and grabbed hold of the mess. “Hmm….” He stopped short. “There’s something in here.”

“Oh, goodie! What is it?” I love surprises.

“Some sort of stick. I saw him chewing bark last night.” He wanted to get the whole thing over with but I’m the type of person who likes to see the inside of a wound.

“How big is it?”

“I don’t care, it’s just a stick.”

“What if it’s the CORN DOG STICK!”

“It can’t be.”

“WHAT IF IT IS?”

And to prove just how much he loves me Jon took another plastic poop bag and pulled the remainder of the stick from its cocoon of shit. And then he got this look on his face, a look I’m sure that was exactly similar to the one he gave his mother when she said, “Your father is Santa Claus,” and he gagged a bit.

“Oh, dear God, Heather. It’s the corn dog stick. And IT’S WHOLE.”

“WHAAAAAAAAATTTTT?

I didn’t believe him. I honestly thought he had been packing a corn dog stick in his pocket and then stuck it into the dog’s droppings to fool me. “No, it’s not.”

“Yes. It is, Heather. Our dog is GOD.”

I can’t imagine how much better than animal feels now that the 32-day-old piece of lumber in his colon finally came out the other end. I cannot comprehend the physics of it, but I wasn’t about to leave that park without taking pictures of it, because WHO WOULD BELIEVE THIS? I’d never be able to prove this, not in a court of law or in a chemistry lab. I begged Jon to let me take it home and put it in my scrapbook, BUT THERE ARE LIMITS TO LOVE.

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